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Consumer Revolution? Food, Things and Fashion in England 1500-1800: Context

Module description

If we are to understand how people lived in the past – how they experienced life and what they valued – it is essential to study patterns of consumption. This means looking at the elements of everyday life: what people ate, lived in, owned, and wore: and why people did what they did. It is often said that modern society is a ‘consumer society’: that we are defined by what we buy rather than our work. Yet people in the past were consumers too, and also constructed their identity through the things they purchased, owned and used. Historians have argued that the early modern period saw the origins of modern consumption in western Europe, sometimes described as a ‘consumer revolution’. This module investigates the changes between 1500 and 1800 in the transition of English society from the medieval to the modern.

Module aims - intentions of the module

To examine the changing nature of consumption in early modern England, particularly changes in diet, housing and clothing, and the ways in which such things were acquired. It examines the adoption of new items such as tea, coffee, clocks, forks and cotton cloth, changes in housing, and the spread of shops, and asks whether by the eighteenth century, these changes constituted a 'consumer revolution'. It draws on a theoretical literature about the place of consumption in modern life, and examines whether it is applicable to historical circumstances, as well as surveying the new and lively field of historical research into early modern consumption. The module investigates how items were marketed and acquired by consumers; it examines how and why new patterns of consumption were adopted, and who by, in particular looking at the role of gender; and looks at people's attitudes to changing consumption patterns.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Evaluate the different complex themes within the topic 'Consumer Revolution? Food, Things and Fashion in England 1500-1800'
• 2. Make close specialist evaluation of the key developments within the period, developed through independent study and seminar work

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse the key developments within a particular historical environment
• 4. Focus on and comprehend complex issues
• 5. Understand and deploy historical terminology in a comprehensible manner

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Carry out independent and autonomous study in addition to group work, including presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 7. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 8. Present complex arguments orally

Syllabus plan

After an introductory session on the meaning of consumption, the following topics may be covered:

• Food and diet, drinking and sociability
• Cooking and dining
• Elite houses
• Vernacular houses, furnishing the home
• New things (clocks and mirrors)
• Elite fashion
• Men’s clothes
• Plebeian fashion
• Purchasing goods
• Shopping and gender
• Was there a ‘Consumer revolution’? Different theoretical approaches will also be considered such as Norbert Elias on manners and etiquette
• Anthropological work on gifts and commodities
• Thorsten Veblen on emulation

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America (John Hopkins University Press, 2001).
• Matthew Johnson, English Houses 1300-1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life (Pearson Longman, 2010).
• Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads and Fashions 1500-1760 (Hambledon Continuum, London, 2007).
• Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England, (Berg, 2003).
• Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600-1800 (Routledge, 2002).
• Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 2009).
• L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660-1760, (Routledge, London, 1988).
• Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths, Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Key words search

Consumer Revolution, Food, Fashion, English History